Vi segnalo un mio nuovo articolo – Gazoz, Turkey’s eclectic national drink, recaptures its old fizz – pubblicato su Al-Monitor qualche giorno fa, in cui svelo tutti i segreti del revival della gazoz/gazzosa: la vera bevanda nazionale turca, ancor più – ogni marca è fortemente identificata col suo luogo di produzione: un vero prodotto identitario – dell’ayran o del rakı.
Vi svelo anche le mie preferenze: la Bağlar di Safranbolu, la Bor di Niğde, la Zafer di Pamukkale/Denizli. Pensate: il consumo è di circa mezzo miliardo di litri all’anno!
L’articolo comincia così, il resto lo leggete su Al-Monitor:
Sweet and refreshing, Turkish gazoz — a light, carbonated soft drink in a variety of colors and flavors — became a symbol of reckless, Westernized youth in the mid-1940s. This fizzy concoction, first produced during Ottoman times, had fallen out of favor in the late 20th century, but it is unexpectedly back. Reflecting Turkey’s regional complexities through its variations, gazoz is stiff competition for anise-flavored raki and ayran (yoghurt mixed with water) in laying claim to being Turkey’s true and timeless “national beverage.”
Gazoz, from the French “eau gazeuse” for sparkling water, became so popular in the 1960s and 1970s that it continues to creep into novels and films set in those bygone decades. The Nobel laureate Orhan Pamuk conveyed the nation’s affection for these fruit-infused sodas in “Museum of Innocence,” a nostalgic novel on love, and exhibits replicas of the iconic Meltem bottles in the actual Museum of Innocence, “in memory of our optimism and the happy-go-lucky spirit of the day.” The filmmaker and actor Cem Yilmaz uses it as a symbol of tolerance and adolescent idealism in his 2016 movie “Gazoz for Iftar.”
Traditionally, gazoz has been produced and consumed locally, creating and evoking strong connections to its place of origin. In the drink’s heyday, every town of Anatolia had a brand or two of its own, made distinctively unique by an original mix of mineral water from its soil and flavors and smells from lemon, ginger, raspberry, gum mastic, and bitter almond, and other edibles.
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